homicide detective Pat Postiglione reviews portrayals of serial killers in movies and TV shows.
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00:00Imaging around throat, lividity at the shoulders, thighs, and torso.
00:05She'd been on her back a while, before he moved her.
00:08I've had cases where they do pose a victim.
00:10He was looking for the shock value, I guess.
00:12That's always been a mystery to me.
00:14My name is Patrick Stiglione.
00:16I was with the Metro Nashville Police Department for 32 and a half years.
00:19As part of the Homicide Cold Case Unit,
00:21the unit solved probably in the neighborhood of 75 cold cases.
00:24Today we're going to look at serial killer investigations in movies and TV
00:28and judge how realistic they really are.
00:38We got blunt force trauma.
00:40What jumps out at me right away in this crime scene
00:42is the fact that there's so many people inside the crime scene.
00:45And they're all giving their opinions as to what they think it is.
00:48They were contaminating the area, they were taking things.
00:50You don't realize that you may be stepping on something,
00:52you may be stepping on the footprints.
00:54So the less people inside the crime scene, the better.
00:59What we see here is something that we call bagging the hands,
01:02and they do that to preserve evidence.
01:04You put a bag over the hand and you seal it.
01:07And then when you get the body to the medical examiner's office,
01:10they were able to take the bag off and see if any items fell out inside the bag.
01:14If not, they were able to scrape the victim's fingernails
01:17looking for any sort of trace evidence.
01:19Thumb was severed.
01:21Killer may have taken it as a trophy.
01:23He was alive when it was cut off.
01:25He was alive when it was cut off.
01:27Echemosis around the wound.
01:30I think what he means is when the thumb was cut, there was a lot of bleeding.
01:34And that typically means the heart is still beating.
01:37You can tell if the victim was stabbed numerous times.
01:39You can typically tell when the victim died.
01:41And some of the stabbed wounds were after the victim had already died, for example.
01:45The serial killers I've been involved in, I had one that did collect a trophy.
01:49So it's something that they do. I don't think it's done on a regular basis.
01:52I was involved in an investigation on a serial killer where he cut a tattoo off the victim's buttocks
01:59and he took the entire area.
02:02We don't know what he did with it. Never found it again.
02:05Don't know why he took it other than for a souvenir.
02:13Killer may have come through the skylight.
02:16Yeah.
02:18Batman finds a gash in the ground from where the killer dropped his weapon.
02:21A lot of times you can look at the injuries on a victim
02:25and sometimes you can make an educated guess as to what the weapon may be.
02:29If you find something near the victim like a gouge mark in the floor,
02:33that may give you a further idea as to what kind of weapon we're looking for.
02:36Is it a blunt instrument? Is it a round instrument? Is it a pointed instrument?
02:40That same item, you want to preserve that area.
02:43You want to photograph that in great detail so you have that down the road.
02:47If you do find an item, you can match it possibly to that divot in the ground.
02:56The scale is just to show the width and the length of the print.
02:59They can do an exact measurement at a crime lab.
03:02Bruce Mendenhall, serial killer, he left a shoe print next to the victim.
03:05When he placed the victim down, we found a shoe print.
03:08And no idea who the shoe print belonged to, but when we caught Bruce Mendenhall,
03:13I noticed a pair of shoes in the back of his truck and I looked at them
03:16and the shoe print on the back of the bottom of the shoe was identical.
03:19It's not as good as a fingerprint unless there's some kind of defect in the shoe,
03:23some kind of tear or rip that you can match to the crime scene to the actual shoe that's recovered.
03:28They do a casting of it and they lift it and they take it and then you have it forever.
03:33I would give this a three.
03:37Star-shaped contact entrance wound over the sternum.
03:42She found a star-shaped wound on the victim,
03:44which would typically indicate that it's a close contact wound.
03:47The suspect would have been fairly close to the victim.
03:49It's not like a distance five or six feet away.
03:52It's more inches away, in some cases, a contact wound, a close contact wound.
03:56Well, typically they'll put that under their nose
03:59because the body is in a high state of decomposition and it's a terrible smell, obviously.
04:04We typically didn't do that.
04:06We had a way of being able to be in front of a decomposed body
04:09and you breathe through your mouth and this way you avoid getting the smell of a decomposing body,
04:14which is not a good thing.
04:16Two of her fingernails are broken off and there's dirt or grit under them.
04:22It looks like she's tried to claw her way through something.
04:25The dirt under the fingernails typically indicates that the victim fought back
04:28and the obvious hope there would be that we can get some DNA under the victim's fingernails
04:33that would identify a killer.
04:35Whatever came out of which finger, they'll identify that.
04:38They'll send it off in separate bottles and each one will be examined
04:42so you'll know you got it off of the first finger, you got it off of the thumb, whatever the case may be.
04:46Sometimes, actually, you may get the suspect's blood if she was able to scratch the suspect.
04:52His blood or her blood may be under her fingernails, so that's what the hope is.
04:58She's got something in her throat.
05:02A calling card could be something like in this case
05:05where they leave something to throw off the investigation possibly,
05:08throw off the location where the crime may have happened.
05:11A calling card could be they do something to the victim,
05:14whether it's a particular injury that they do to show that this is not the first one they've done.
05:19Sometimes they call it a copycat where they'll do something that they know someone else has done
05:24and they do it to try to make it appear as though it's coming from the same suspect
05:27when in fact it's a different suspect.
05:29The more the killer does at the crime scene, if he or she leaves something behind,
05:34we think that's great. We hope they do that every time.
05:37What is the first and principal thing he does? What needs does he serve by killing?
05:43To catch another killer, Clarice consults with serial killer, Hannibal Lecter.
05:48You don't know how legit the serial killer's going to be.
05:51You take the information they give you because they're trying to, in theory, help you catch another serial killer.
05:56So I would interview him and I would interview the heck out of him just for intel, just to get information.
06:02And my experience has been the serial killers, a lot of times, are truthful only when it benefits them.
06:08How do we begin to covet, Clarice? We begin by coveting what we see every day.
06:13And don't your eyes seek out the things you want?
06:16Hannibal's analysis, in my opinion, is a little over the top.
06:19He may be right on the money, but typically it's not that, I don't think it's that deep
06:23in terms of why serial killers kill and why they do what they do.
06:27I think it's really not that simple to say, well, he killed because of this reason or that reason
06:32or anger or sexual issues or whatever the case may be.
06:35They have no guilt, no fear, no guilt, no remorse.
06:39The only regret they have is getting caught, otherwise they would have kept on killing.
06:43I would rate this a 7. I think the part that pulls it down from a 10 would be the analysis that Hannibal Lecter gave.
06:49I don't think that was realistic. I think that was a little over the top.
06:58The reason why you wear gloves is in the event you do inadvertently touch something,
07:02you're not going to get your print on it or get your DNA on it.
07:05You certainly don't want that to happen.
07:07Usually you're not going to touch the victim. You have gloves on just as a protection.
07:12Booties as well, so you don't bring your shoe print in there.
07:14You don't track any outside sources, dirt or whatever, inside the crime scene.
07:21I.D.?
07:23No, sir.
07:24Well, usually when we're at the crime scene, we have no idea who the victim is.
07:27And we don't really ask if there's any I.D. on the victim.
07:30And the reason is we don't go into the victim's clothing or any other.
07:33We don't touch anything. We leave that because we don't know what value that will be.
07:37If there's no I.D. on the victim, what they do is they do fingerprint.
07:41And sometimes if the victim has a criminal history, we'll get an I.D.
07:45And sometimes if the victim has a criminal history, we'll get an I.D. within an hour.
07:51Imaging around throat, lividity at the shoulders, thighs, and torso.
07:56She'd been on her back a while before he moved her.
07:59The fact that they didn't really touch the body, other than their description of the wounds and that kind of thing, I think that was realistic.
08:07Usually if they're going to move the body, they move the body to avoid capture.
08:11A lot of times if the victim is, let's say, lying on their back for an extended period,
08:15they'll have what they call lividity where the blood pools and it's on the back.
08:19You can see it. It's a purple color. It's obvious.
08:22But then if you find the victim up, like in this case, in a leaning position, and there's lividity on the back,
08:28you're going to know that the victim had been moved.
08:30I was involved in an investigation on a serial killer.
08:33He would display his victims in certain ways.
08:35One case I had where he lied the victim down on the ground and exposed her body and put her feet together.
08:41So he was looking for the shock value, I guess. That's always been a mystery to me.
08:45We're going to need more men for a grid search.
08:49Set up a perimeter as wide as possible on those three roads.
08:53He wanted a grid search, which I think is a great idea.
08:55And a grid search is where you mark off certain areas and you search that area.
09:00One thing I'd be curious of where the victim was found would be tire tracks coming in, how the victim got there.
09:06So we'd be real reluctant to let any vehicles come rolling in there for that reason
09:11because we wanted to see if there's any tire tracks that we could potentially connect to a suspect,
09:16bringing the victim to that area.
09:18But the discussion between the two detectives, I think that was realistic.
09:23On your knees now!
09:26No.
09:28When you're going to get a killer, typically you have your gun out. That's true.
09:32But you usually have an army with you.
09:34In some cases you may have a SWAT team with you, depending on what the circumstances are.
09:38But you usually don't go there by yourself, unless you may go to this location looking for a potential witness
09:44and all of a sudden there's a suspect. That may happen too.
09:47Then you have no control. Then you have to do with whatever you have.
09:50When I say clear the house, you want to go inside the house and see if anyone's in there,
09:54whether it's a victim or whether it's a suspect.
09:56You take out your weapon, your service weapon, and you clear the house.
09:58These seem to be okay, but it's kind of a big job for one person to do,
10:02to look like a fairly big house, to go in there and clear that house on his own.
10:06Typically you need backup to make sure the house is cleared thoroughly.
10:10I would give this a nine.
10:11I think what strikes me as being somewhat accurate is the two detectives,
10:16Maybe what we're looking at, you know, it's difficult to tell.
10:19We don't know, so we're kind of throwing information back and forth.
10:29Well, I think when they entered the crime scene, they had the whole team with them,
10:32which I think was fairly accurate in the beginning of the scene when they approached that.
10:36They didn't know if it was a suspect or not.
10:38They didn't know if it was a suspect or not.
10:41which I think was fairly accurate in the beginning of the scene when they approached that.
10:44They didn't know if it was a suspect.
10:46They didn't know who was lying on the bed there.
10:48If you think the killer is in there with the victim,
10:50then the evidence actually becomes secondary because the victim becomes your primary concern.
10:55So let's go there with the troops and go on in there with some heavy artillery
10:59in the event we can catch the killer before the killer actually kills our victim.
11:10You want the victim to survive, because that victim is a wealth of information, obviously.
11:15And if we're dealing with a serial killer, this victim could potentially tell you things about this serial killer
11:20that will link him to maybe ten other homicides. Who knows?
11:23No one touches anything!
11:27Oh, man. God, s***.
11:30This picture was taken three days ago.
11:32I think it was further accurate when the detective said,
11:35no one touches anything.
11:37I think what kind of blew that up was when he picked up a whole bunch of photographs
11:42and started going through the photographs.
11:44After he got done saying, no one touches anything,
11:47he expressed the photographs had, I assume, a time stamp on it that showed three days ago.
11:52Anything with a date on it, whether it's a real date,
11:55or whether somebody put that on to try to throw off the investigation,
11:57anything like that is useful.
12:06I mean, I've been on situations very similar to that,
12:09where the suspect is there and the suspect has a weapon.
12:11The suspect, like in this case, shoots at you.
12:14You're going to immediately call for backup.
12:17And they didn't do that.
12:18Now, you can chase the suspect. I'm with you on that.
12:21But at the same time, you want him to hear the sirens.
12:23You want him to hear the backup coming for you.
12:26That may make him run away.
12:28That may make him stop doing what he's doing.
12:30But you want that backup en route.
12:35If the suspect is still in there, then they got all the innocent people out.
12:38That's typically what they would do.
12:40If the bad guy shoots at the police,
12:42you don't necessarily want the police shooting back
12:44because you don't know who's behind that door.
12:46Like in this case, they went inside and there was three kids in there.
12:49Had they shot through the door, you know,
12:51there's a good chance they would have struck somebody totally innocent, uninvolved.
13:00Well, sometimes you have to kick in the door.
13:02But I can tell you through experience
13:04that sometimes the door's not easy to kick in.
13:06So they have these little ramrods that they use.
13:08They can slam the door open and go like that.
13:10And it just bangs it open real quick.
13:12There's a deadbolt involved and whatnot.
13:14You may not be able to physically kick the door in.
13:16You got to know how you're going to get in this door.
13:18And the killer's on the other side.
13:19You're really exposing yourself to some real dangers.
13:22I give this a five.
13:24Don't move.
13:25I want your money and your car keys.
13:27Okay.
13:28The Zodiac Killer's been around since the 1970s,
13:31killing people periodically
13:32and then sending little notes to other people
13:35admitting that he's the one that did that.
13:37This scene depicts real Zodiac victims,
13:40Brian C. Hartnell and Cecilia Shepard.
13:42Brian C. Hartnell survived the event
13:44and was able to provide key details
13:46about his encounter with the Zodiac Killer.
13:49Was that thing even loaded?
13:55When we look at these cases, these serial cases,
13:58we have to look at two different things,
14:00whether we're dealing with an organized killer
14:02or whether we're dealing with a disorganized killer.
14:04With the Zodiac, I think he's more of an organized
14:07versus a disorganized.
14:08I mean, it seems like he has a plan in place.
14:10It's not something that happens spur of the moment.
14:12I think that's the key.
14:14Most of the serial killers I've dealt with
14:16fell into the category of disorganized.
14:18When they find their victim, it sometimes happens
14:20when they were not maybe expecting it,
14:22so they go ahead and take advantage of the situation,
14:24victim at the wrong place at the wrong time kind of a deal.
14:27The disorganized killer is just that, disorganized.
14:29When you get to a crime scene, it's kind of all over the place.
14:32There's things strewn about.
14:34I got a single 9-millimeter casing.
14:40That's not going to happen.
14:41When he picked up the 9-millimeter shell casing
14:43and picked it up and took it away from the victim
14:45and took it outside the car,
14:46because you don't want to contaminate it.
14:48You want to leave it exactly where it was,
14:50exactly how it was observed.
14:51It's photographed. It's videotaped.
14:53Then it's collected by the crime scene investigators,
14:55not by the detective.
14:56The crime scene is a sacred ground,
14:58and you have to preserve everything there.
15:00You don't want to touch anything.
15:01You don't want to move anything.
15:02He stuck what looked like a pencil or something in there.
15:04I mean, you can use an item similar to that
15:06where you can slide it inside the casing to lift it up.
15:09This way, nothing is touched on the casing itself,
15:11because you're hopeful to get DNA off that casing
15:14when the person loaded the weapon.
15:15In theory, there's a fingerprint on there
15:17possibly belonging to the suspect.
15:18My experience has been they'll typically use a weapon
15:22that may not leave a casing.
15:23For example, they may use a revolver
15:24where there's no casings involved.
15:26Other than the picking up the shell casing,
15:30I would give it probably an 8.
15:40Ted Bundy was a notorious serial killer.
15:42He had kidnapped a 12-year-old girl,
15:44I believe is what got him eventually caught.
15:46Bundy decapitated at least 12 of his victims with a hacksaw.
15:51Typically, cutting off the heads or cutting off body parts
15:55usually doesn't happen.
15:56Normally, when the serial killer kills a victim,
15:58they want to get away from that victim as soon as they can
16:01and get separated from the victim,
16:02whether that means dumping the body in the field,
16:04dumping it off the highway.
16:05They want to put as much space between them and the victim
16:09as they possibly can as fast as they can.
16:11Some stay with the body.
16:13In Bruce Mendenhall's case,
16:14he would keep the body in his truck for a day or two.
16:17But in Ted Bundy's case,
16:18for him to take the time to do what he did
16:21is just inexplicable to me.
16:26Bite mark carnage.
16:27I've testified several times at different trials
16:30involving serial killers.
16:32It was typical of the prosecution to say what he said
16:35in his opening statements, talking about the evidence,
16:37talking about the bite marks.
16:38You'd walk the jury through the whole scenario,
16:41the whole chain of events,
16:42and how you were able to, as a detective,
16:45figure out this was a guy, whether it's fingerprints,
16:47whether it's confessions, whether it's video,
16:49whatever it happens to be, DNA, for example,
16:53and you explain how you did it
16:55with the help of the crime scene investigators
16:57because if it wasn't for the crime scene investigators,
16:59a lot of times these cases would never be made.
17:01I think I'd give it a 10
17:03because the courtroom scene was accurate,
17:06and the prosecutor laid out his case very well, too.
17:10He's learned.
17:13No more fibers.
17:14This case was based on the Atlanta child murders,
17:17and there was evidence in terms of trace evidence.
17:20There was carpet fibers found on some of the victims
17:23that linked back to him.
17:24And let's say we find a crime scene,
17:26we have a homicide victim,
17:27and we find some fibers on this victim
17:30that later down the road were able to link those fibers
17:33to that sweater that we took out of the killer's closet,
17:36for example.
17:37That would be one way of linking him to fibers.
17:4014 bridges.
17:41Set up scouts under the bridges on either side.
17:43Constant surveillance from sundown to sunrise.
17:47We had a serial killer
17:49that was killing people at fast-food restaurants,
17:53and he was using Captain D's, for example.
17:56He was robbing Captain D's and killing the people,
17:59killing everybody.
18:00So we staked out all the Captain D's in the area,
18:03and we were hopeful that he would try to hit
18:05while we were obviously staked out.
18:07And we did that, hoping he would hit.
18:09And in this case, they're doing the exact same thing.
18:12They're staking out the rivers,
18:13hoping he would dump his next victim.
18:15It sounds like they had a lot to stake out.
18:17I don't know if they had the manpower to do it,
18:19but you may stake out this area tonight,
18:21that area tomorrow night,
18:22but it has to be a process that you can't quit on.
18:25A lot of it's guesswork, but it's educated guesses usually.
18:32The only way I could have those girls was to kill them,
18:36and it worked.
18:37Mindhunter is a book where real FBI agents
18:41profile serial killers.
18:43One of the real killers profiled is Ed Kemper,
18:46who was betrayed here.
18:47Kemper was responsible for at least eight deaths.
18:50A killer like Kemper would not be handled like that.
18:53There'd be guards there with him.
18:55There's no way he'd be able to move freely like that.
18:58Absolutely impossible.
18:59And he would not be chained to the bed.
19:01There's no way he'd be able to get out of the bed
19:03and walk around as freely as he was doing in this clip.
19:06I would give it a 7.
19:08The scene where Kemper is being interviewed
19:11is not really accurate.
19:12I think the first clip would be probably a 10,
19:16when they were actually on the river.
19:22Two plastic bags in the freezer,
19:25each containing a human heart.
19:27Jeffrey Dahmer was a serial killer.
19:29In some cases, he would keep the bodies.
19:31He would behead them.
19:32He would keep body parts inside of his refrigerator
19:35and apparently had been at some point
19:38possibly even eating some of his victims
19:40and really just beyond the imagination,
19:43couldn't even think of, he was involved in.
19:45It appears to be an accurate depiction
19:47of Jeffrey Dahmer's crimes
19:49and also how they approached the crime scene.
19:51They were doing the same thing.
19:52They were in the suspect's apartment,
19:54but at the same time, it was also the killing field
19:56where he was killing a lot of his victims,
19:58so it was kind of a two-fold thing.
20:00The suspect lived here.
20:01He also did some of his killings here.
20:03In the bedroom, there was five more skulls.
20:10When you find just bones, it's a little more difficult.
20:12You hope to find some kind of markings on the bones
20:14that'll indicate a gunshot wound,
20:16indicate a strike mark, a stab wound,
20:18or anything along those lines.
20:19It's more difficult when you find just bones,
20:21but when you find bones in someone's refrigerator
20:23or a bunch of bones inside of a vat
20:26full of some sort of a chemical,
20:28you can rest assured that that victim was murdered.
20:30And sometimes they could put it together
20:32where they can help tell you we're dealing with a female,
20:35we're dealing with a male.
20:36A lot of times they can tell the sex of the victim.
20:38A lot of times they can tell the age of the victim by the bones.
20:41I would rate this clip a 10.
20:42It looks like something that we would have done
20:44pretty much the same way they were doing it in detail,
20:47great detail.
20:53Normally when you're in a low-light environment
20:55like this one was, you would bring in more lights.
20:57You don't want to miss a single thing.
20:59Big spotlights, and they would make the place
21:01look like daylight.
21:02Remember, crime scenes are three-dimensional.
21:05Floors, walls, and ceilings.
21:08That's very accurate because we've had cases
21:11where the victim is killed, for example, here,
21:13and we have cast-off blood on the ceiling.
21:16You can tell by the cast-off, by the direction
21:18of the cast-off on the ceiling or on the wall,
21:21whether the victim was hit with a left hand
21:23or with a right hand.
21:25A lot of people don't realize that,
21:26but if you're hitting someone with a left hand,
21:28their blood is going to come on the ceiling
21:30and make an arc a certain way.
21:32So you're going to be able to look at the ceiling
21:34and say you're dealing with a left-handed person.
21:38Okay.
21:44Typically, the tape lifting will be done
21:46on the crime scene.
21:47Well, tape lifting is taking a piece of tape
21:49and lifting an item, whatever it is,
21:51fingerprint or whatever the item is.
21:53In this case, I think it was a hair,
21:55and you would put it on the tape,
21:56and you would lift it off the tape,
21:57and then you'd preserve that tape.
21:59You'd put it in the jar, and you'd preserve it.
22:01Down the road, DNA analysis,
22:03match it to somebody else, potentially,
22:05or maybe even help identify the victim
22:07or whatever the case may be.
22:08You want to keep that hair separate.
22:09You photograph it the way it is,
22:11but you're going to know that at one point
22:12they were together.
22:15I want you to saw her hands off at the wrist line.
22:18We got to have those cuffs for prints.
22:20The collecting of the handcuffs by cutting off the hands
22:23would probably not happen.
22:25Sometimes you may have to cut the cuffs off
22:27for fingerprints or potential DNA on there,
22:30not belonging to the victim but belonging to the suspect.
22:32You would typically take the body from the scene
22:34and take the body to the medical examiner's office
22:36where it's a sanitized area, plenty of light,
22:39and plenty of time to do what you need to do
22:41versus doing it in the mud.
22:43Well, we've had situations where we've had the victim
22:45with rope around the neck, for example,
22:47and we would have to take that,
22:49and we want to preserve the knot.
22:51So you don't undo the knot.
22:52You cut the rope off in the back of the neck,
22:55and you take it off.
22:56So now we got the knot preserved
22:58in the event something else happens,
22:59and we have a similar knot.
23:01Same thing with handcuffs.
23:02If you don't have a key,
23:04there's no way to unlock the handcuffs.
23:06They would probably just cut the handcuffs off
23:08and then go through the process to analyze the handcuffs.
23:11We're looking for DNA. We're looking for fingerprints.
23:13We're looking for anything that might belong to the suspect.
23:16I would rate this around a 6.
23:18I think my favorite scene that I watched today
23:20was from True Detective
23:21when they were going after the bad guy,
23:23when they went into the house to try to clear the house,
23:26their discussions, their interaction
23:28when they found the body.
23:32[♪ soft music playing ♪